6 African and Caribbean Poetry – An Overview
Ms. Aparna Prem
AFRICAN AND CARIBBEAN POETRY—AN OVERVIEW
This module gives an overview of the poetry from two different geographical areas— the Caribbean islands and Africa. Because of their complicated colonial histories and influences, both the countries write in many languages other than English. However, this module would focus more on Anglophone Caribbean and African poetry.
African Poetry
Today’s concept of African poetry constitutes a distinct idea of accepting all the African countries as one. However, the geographical, racial and temporal differences in colonialism, struggles for independence and the postcolonial politics in each country of the continent also reflect in their contribution to the creation of the canon of African poetry. Regionalism added to indigenous poetic traditions make it more complicated to have a definite theorizing of African poetry. England, France, and Portugal are the three main colonial forces that governed the continent, the influence and resistance of which still define African writing.
Negritude, Nationalism and Language
One easier method of categorizing African poetry is based on language, which is majorly depended on the colonial influences. The practice of assimilation and regrouping of the tribes followed by France and Portugal during the colonial era rewrote the history of the African countries almost forever. When the pressure to accept colonial ideologies increased on the African tribes, Negritude asserted African traditions and reclaimed their identities. Negritude thus became a social as well as literary response to colonialism. Léopold Sédar Senghor, Senegalese poet and political leader was one of the literary and political figures of Negritude. He led his nation’s independence movement and his poetic language highlights his own experiences of political struggle and violence. Indigenous languages, European languages and pidgin version as well as dialects are mixed in most of the literary works of Africa. At the same time, bringing together Anglophone, Francophone and Lusophone linguistic traditions into a single idea of African poetry is not that easy too. For the postcolonial Africa, with its diverse regional as well as colonial linguistic influences, multiplicity and the related struggles define their identity and tradition.
Christopher Ifekandu Okigbo (Nigeria)
Okigbo was one of the traditional African writers from Nigeria, who was heavily influenced by Greek, Latin and European literatures and traditions. Modern poetry, especially the poems of T. S. Eliot and Ezra Pound, influenced his writing style and choice of themes. Though he died at the Nsukka battlefront while fighting for the independence of Biafra, his contribution to African poetry has been immense. He explored the themes that vary from war to nature, tradition to modernism. Spirituality and freedom were the ruling concepts of his life and his poems. In the beginning of the poem “The Passage”, Okigbo places nature on a supreme pedestal and considers the nature the muse of his writing. The ‘passage’ is the spiritual experience he goes through, by considering himself diminutive in front of the colossal nature. The pain of struggle for freedom is vented out through such spiritual passages, though which Okigbo travels to find his self.
John Pepper Clark (Nigeria)
Clark wrote poems that highlighted the stark realities of Nigeria and of Africa. The political and social symbos he chose point towards a critical view of national and international relations. Though the symbols and themes overtly appeared to be simple, the politics of national and humanity were openly criticized in his works. Some poems also foreground nature as the supreme power that defines humanity. As he was also part of the Nigerian Civil War, the contrasting images of war and peace appeared in some of his poems. However, he can also be considered as one of the traditional writers with Okigbo and Wole Soyinka as he upheld his traditional heritage in most of his poems. Describing and re- narrating history was one the techniques he chose to find his essence and identity. His book The Casualties: Poems 1966-68 describes the true cruelties and violence happened during the Nigeria-Biafra Civil War. Through his poems, Clark contributed to the building and imagination of a postcolonial Nigeria.
Mazisi Kunene (South Africa)
Mazisi Kunene can be considered one of the modern poets of Africa, careful observation of language and themes used. Kunene, who wrote in Zulu language, tried to move away from the traditional classical influences in his writing style. His master’s thesis was titled An Analytical Survey of Zulu Poetry, Both Traditional and Modern. He keenly observed and had a deep knowledge about the poetic techniques in Zulu poetry. He was against following the traditional paths that poets like Okigbo and Clark took. He wanted a more analytical documentation of the South African political and social scenario, rather that re-telling the religious and classical traditions. His Zulu Poems (1970) was a collection of his translated poems from Zulu to English. His contribution towards the genre of translated works was thus immense. One of the most famous poems was Emperor Shaka the Great, an epic poem that narrated the life and history of a Zulu leader. It is also a narrative of the history of Zulu language. The epic style that he chose to conceive his ideas of his land, was part of the modern tradition he followed. His other works like Anthem of the Decades highlighted religious and spiritual aspects of the society.
Okot p’Bitek (Uganda)
Similar to Kunene’s technique of using long poem narrative form in documenting or rewriting the history of his country, Okot p’Bitek too gained recognition for his epic poem Song of Lawino. This long poem portrayed the life of a rural African wife whose husband is trapped in a westernized lifestyle. Song of Lawino depicts the contrasts between rural life and modernized city life through the characters of husband and wife. It also questions the relevance and influence of industrialization and Americanization in the rural areas of Africa. Moreover, this poem describes the struggle of a modern man who finds it difficult to choose between the dualities of tradition and modernity, and of the black and the white. The long poem is also a documentation of traditional values of Africa, which the poet wants to be preserved through his verses. The Okot School of Poetry is a developing genre in African poetry in which works follow a verse monologue technique in traditional song form. It is also called The East African Song School. Okot also wrote a sequel Song of Ocol, which was the husband’s reply to the wife. His other works focus on contemporary and relevant social and political topics.
Gabriel Okara (Nigeria)
The extreme dichotomies of life, especially the experiences between European influences and African traditions are intensely depicted in the poems of Nigerian poet Gabriel Okara. The symbolic landscapes and African imageries are superimposed with English linguistic techniques, and this blend forms the major characteristic of Okara’s poems. Most of his poems like “Once Upon a Time” and “Piano and Drum”, deal with the old customs and traditions of Africa that are being threatened by the European manipulating powers. In “Once Upon a Time”, Okara describes how artificial life has become:
. . . ‘Feel at home!’ ‘Come again’:
they say, and when I come
again and feel
at home, once, twice,
there will be no thrice-
for then I find doors shut on me
So I have learned many things, son.
I have learned to wear many faces
like dresses – home face,
office face, street face, host face,cocktail face,
with all their conforming smiles
like a fixed portrait smile.
And I have learned too
to laugh with only my teeth
and shake hands without my heart.
I have also learned to say, ‘Goodbye’,
when I mean ‘Good-riddance’:
to say ‘Glad to meet you’,
without being glad; and to say ‘It’s been
nice talking to you’, after being bored
As described through the words of a father to his son, Okara records as well as warns the changes that the African culture has gone through because of overpowering influences.
Kofi Awoonor (Ghana)
Kofi Awoonor was born in an Ewe ethnic group in Ghana. Awoonor’s grandmother was an Ewe dirge singer and he was influenced by Ewe music, culture and tradition, which he tried to incorporate into his verses. By providing a modern form of re-narration and documentation, Awoonor gave his ethnic cultures a platform to develop as well as influence other cultures. At the same time, this technique can be seen as a way of resisting European and American influences on the African ethnicities. Other major themes were religion, spirituality, philosophy, life, death and exile. One of the most famous of his collection of poems is Rediscovery and Other Poems (1964). Again, similar to other African poets, Awoonor has also followed a path to rediscover the identity of the self through poetry and imagination. Through his poems, he tried to find out the wide range of possibilities that a vernacular, ethnic language can offer. The dirge form that he imbibed from his childhood days, blended with an urge to hold on to ethnic traditions, constitutes the major focus of most of his poetry. He died in a terrorist attack in Nairobi, Kenya.
James David Rubadiri (Malawi)
James Rubadiri is a Malawian poet, playwright and novelist. Rubadiri places himself as one of the major poets who focuses on the cultural and political changes in post- independent Africa. Although he does not deny the relation between colonialism and the present day African poetry, Rubadiri highlights the resistance of African traditions on westernization. One of his famous poems “An Africa Thunderstorm” clearly depicts the African predicament of fighting against the storm that comes from the West that would take away their ethnic and regional cultures and traditions. He describes the storm of Western influence with sarcasm and anger:
- Edward Baugh (Jamaica)
- Louise Bennett (Jamaica)
- John Agard (Guyana)
- Merle Collins (Grenada)
- Cyril Dabydeen (Guyana)
- Derek Walcott (St. Lucia)
- David Dabydeen (Guyana)
- James Berry (Jamaica)
- Grace Nichols (Guyana)
- Jean Binta Breeze (Jamaica)
- Edward Kamau Brathwaite (Barbados)
- Jan Carew (Guyana)
- Martin Carter (Guyana)
- Wayne Brown (Trinidad and Tobago)
- Brian Chan (Guyana)
- Lorna Goodison (Jamaica)
- Cecil Gray (Trinidad and Tobago)
- Kendel Hippolyte (Saint Lucia)
- Arnold H. Itwaru (Guyana)
- Fred D’Aguiar (Guyana)
- Mahadai Das (Guyana)
- John Figueroa (Jamaica)
- Anson Gonzalez (Trinidad and Tobago)
Lloyd Brown, who points out the nation-building aesthetics visible in the works of Brathwaite, Wynter and Lamming in his 1978 book West Indian Poetry, narrates the history of Caribbean poetry as “a movement from the derivativeness and colonial ‘conversions’ of the earlier years to the more imaginative and complex ‘transformations’ of the contemporary period” (11, qtd in Donnell 41). The Caribbean, where we find traces of various migrants, is named as the “archetypal ‘migrant’ space” where “multiple diasporas intersect – African, South Asian, Irish, Scottish, Chinese” (Donnell 84).
Language
Though the two major languages used in writing poetry are French and English, one of the major characteristic of Caribbean poetry is the use of Creole. Edward Kamau Brathwaite created the idea of ‘nation language’ by elevating the language of slaves and other people who were brought into the Caribbean islands to a national level:
We in the Caribbean have a . . . kind of plurality: we have English, which is the imposed language on much of the archipelago. It is an imperial language, as are French, Dutch and Spanish. We also have what we call creole English, which is a mixture of English and an adaption that English took in the new environment of the Caribbean when it became mixed with the other important languages. We have also what is called nation language, which is the king of English spoken by the people who were brought to the Caribbean, not the official English now, but the language of slaves and labourers, the servants who were brought in.
Nation language is thus a way of reclaiming a Caribbean identity, which is independent from the influences of colonialism and colonial history. Through nation language writers claim their individual identity and the identity as a ‘people’. Even though not all poets followed Brathwaite’s idea of nation language, the quest for a distinct way of expressing their identity can be seen in most of the Caribbean poets. Other than the different European languages like Spanish, English, French, Dutch and Portuguese spoken in the Caribbean islands, creolization has given rise to a more number of languages and dialects that are blends of European, African, Asian and indigenous voices. The term and the idea of ‘Caribbean Literature’ are incomplete without its inevitable relation with the plurality of languages and cultures that constitute it.
Rastafarianism, Reggae and Dub Movement
The Rastafari movement is a Afro-centric religious movement based in the Caribbean island of Jamaica that has no monuments or buildings and it propagates harmony with nature. This religion focuses on the individual and rejects the existing beliefs of Christianity and other religions followed in the Afro-Caribbean regions. A universal freedom that Rastafarianism propagated was communicated to reggae songs and poems.
Mutabaruka, Linton Kwesi Johnson, and Michael Smith were the founders of the Dub movement. Christopher Laird, John Agard, Frederick Williams, Fred D’Aguiar, Valerie Bloom, Jean Binta Breeze and Lilliam Allen are also part of the movement. Dub movement has a specific language and rhythm and used vocal instruments to convey both cries and silences. Linton Kwesi Johnson is a Jamaican poet based in London he is widely considered to the father of reggae dub poetry, a mix of reggae music and spoken verse. Mutabaruka, born Allan Hope, is a Jamaican Rastafari dub poet. He used every-day language that could be easily understood. An excerpt from his poem “Nursery Rhyme Lament” would show how he turns the nursery rhymes and accepted frameworks to sarcasm and irony.
fus time
jack an’ jill
use fi run up de hill everyday
now dem get pipe
wata rate increase
everday dem woulda reincarnate humpty dumpty
fi fall of de wall
likkle bway blue
who love to blow im horn to de sheep in the meddow
likkle bway blue grow up now
an de sheep dem get curried
ina likkle cold suppa shap dang de street. . .
Here Mutabaruka uses a blend of sub-dialect and nursery rhymes to point out the realities of the society, which is different from what is taught to the child. When sarcasm is blended with words from nursery rhymes, the poem becomes a way of fighting back to the social belief systems. While Rastafarianism and dub poetry were part of the struggle against the social and cultural systems, they also contributed towards an understanding of Caribbean identity. By presenting the poems orally, the poetic expressions were made available to a larger audience.
Edward Kamau Brathwaite (Barbados)
For Edward Kamau Brathwaite, Barbadian poet and historian, a creolized view of the Caribbean plays a major role in imagining the nation. He comments, “I say you have to be everything to bring those fragments together because fragments by their very nature are everything . . . They are in fact everything, little seeds growing throughout the scattered diaspora, throughout the Caribbean” (qtd in Torres-Saillant 59). The works of Brathwaite laid the foundation for the linguistic identity of the Caribbean region, the creole identity that became one of the pedestals of Caribbean nationalism. For Brathwaite, “Nation language is the language which is influenced very strongly by the African model, the African aspect of our New World/Caribbean heritage” (“Nation Language” 311). Though the nation language uses ‘English’ lexicon, “its contours, its rhythm and timbre, its sound explosions” are not in English (311). In the poem “Wings of a Dove”, Brathwaite describes the condition of a Rastafarian in the contemporary Caribbean society. He points out, with a philosophical awe, the poverty-stricken reality of the Caribbean nation:
Derek Walcott (St. Lucia)
The 1992 Nobel Prize winner Derek Walcott, who was born in St. Lucia, wrote poems by taking the symbols from nature and personal experiences. His poems demonstrate an urge to find the self, and the identity of the land. He goes back to the classics and European influences just to realize that past is not enough to create and imagine a future. The sea, the islands, ships, gulls, sand and surf blended with European history and African heritage pave a platform for Walcott to reclaim his identity.
Jean Binta Breeze (Jamaica)
Jean Binta Breeze wrote about woman’s life and experiences along with other socially relevant themes, and added a new perspective to the world of dub poetry. As she was raised in rural Jamaica, her poems’ linguistic and thematic structures displayed a natural way of expressing ideas in verse. Through her poems, she made her writings associate with rural Caribbean identities. Most of the time, the narrator would be a native woman who is struggling in another place, where is a minority. Her poems represented minority communities, women and the Caribbean diaspora.
Claude McKay (Jamaican-American)
Festus Claudius “Claude” McKay (1889-1948) was a Jamaican writer who migrated to Harlem, New York, USA. He was one of the seminal figures in the Harlem Renaissance, in which black immigrants or the African-Americans struggled for identity through art and literature. His 1922 poetry collection Harlem Shadows was one among the first books published during Harlem Renaissance. His other poetry collections are Songs of Jamaica (1912), Spring in New Hampshire and Other Poems (1920) and The Selected Poems of Claude McKay (1953). Like his novels, his poetry also portrayed black individuals in search of identity in a white world. In one of his most famous poems “America”, he describes the land by focusing on the dualities he experience as a black immigrant.
Lorna Goodison (Jamaica)
Lorna Goodison has become one of the internationally known contemporary Anglophone Caribbean writers. With a focus on motherhood, sexuality, and equality, Goodison’s poems highlight gender as well as racial issues. A blend of Jamaican Creole and English gives her poems a definite linguistic pattern that adds to the thematic prominence of Caribbean identity. However, most of her best poems celebrate womanhood, the different roles played by a woman throughout her life. The poem “For My Mother May I Inherit Half Her Strength” shows her respect and awe towards her mother. Her own experiences as a woman, a mother, especially in the Jamaican context also highlight violence, poverty, and politics and other stark realities of life.
Martin Carter (Guyana)
Martin Carter was one of the major poets from the Caribbean who was part of the political movement for national independence. He was arrested by the British colonial government and during his imprisonment, Carter wrote his most famous collection of poems Poems of Resistance, which was published later in 1954. His poems convey a strong political message, with anger and frustration. However, he ends with a positive note towards a bright future of the nation. The poem “I Come from the Nigger Yard” is one of the best examples to show how the “sad music” that hovers on the land, silences and “uncountable miseries” still make him dream of “the world of to-morrow” towards which he “turn with [his] strength”.
Conclusion
Mapping of the literary tradition of African and Caribbean poetry goes back to the oral customs and practices that still becomes the thematic structure of the same. From a postcolonial perspective, a search for the possibilities of inventing or re-discovering an identity for the self and the nation becomes one of the foremost priorities in writing verse. The modern poetic techniques find the meaning of the self in the dilemma between the colonial past and postcolonial present. The critical positions that these and more poets take to create a literature of their own, arise from a complex poetic tradition that limits them into a boundary but at the same time allow them to explore and recreate new practices. Today’s African and Caribbean poetry also have to deal with issues like globalization, ethnic conflicts, immigration and multiculturalism. Forming a new canon also calls for an international recognition, which in turn would cause them to sacrifice their cultural and linguistic preferences. When the in-between identities gain more space and recognition through these poets, the question that remains is of tradition and modernity. Though these poets endeavour to create a balance between the dichotomies of identity, one has to be wary of the politics of inclusion and exclusion as well, that inevitably goes behind any kind of identity-creation.
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Reference
- Brathwaite, Edward Kamau. Contradictory Omens: Cultural Diversity and Integration in the Caribbean. New York: Savacou Publications, 1974. Google Books Search. Web. 28 Nov 2012.
- —. “Nation Language”. The Post-Colonial Studies Reader. Ed. Bill Ashcroft, Gareth Griffiths, and Helen Tiffin. London: Routledge, 1995. 303-313. Print.
- —. “Wings of a Dove”. Sarah Herbert. Virginia Commonwealth University. N. d. N. Pag. Web. 26 July <http://www.courses.vcu.edu/ENG- snh/Caribbean/Barbados/Poetry/Brathwaite2.htm>
- Donnell, Alison. Twentieth-Century Caribbean Literature: Critical Moments in Anglophone Literary History. London: Routledge, 2006. Print. “Mutabaruka Lyrics Page.” Dub Poetry. Mutabaruka Online. 28 Jan. 2003. <http://www.mutabaruka.com/lyrics.htm>
- Okara, Gabriel. “Once Upon a Time”. The Henrybrothers Blog. N. d. N. pag. Web. 29 August 2014. <http://thehenrybrothers.wordpress.com/2011/06/04/once-upon-a-time-gabriel- okara/>
- Rubadiri, David. “An Africa Thunderstorm”. Poemhunter. N. d. N. pag. Web. 24 August 2014. <http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/an-africa-thunderstorm/>
- Torres-Saillant, Silvio. “The Cross-Cultural Unity of Caribbean Literature: Towards a Centripetal Vision”. A History of the Literature in the Caribbean. Vol. 3 Cross- Cultural Studies. Ed. A. James Arnold. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 1997. 57- Print.
- Walcott, Derek. “Sea Grapes”. Sea Grapes. London: Jonathan Cape, 1976. Print.